Continuing the review round-up of recent films watched over the past couple of weeks. The Master has been high up on my list of films to watch ever since I saw the first trailer for it. Paul Thomas Anderson has become one of the most distinctive voices in cinema for a few years now, but for me, There Will Be Blood and The Master are truly visionary films. Epics of the interior and exterior. Despite the luminous cinematography, many of the best scenes in The Master are head-to-head dialogue exchanges between Joaquin Phoenix’s engagingly chaotic drifter and Philip Seymour Hoffman’s egotistic cult-leader.

Supposedly based on the life of L. Ron Hubbard, The Master charts a life of desperate seeking on the part of Joaquin Phoenix’s Freddie; a desire to be a part of something, to find a meaning where there is no meaning, and so many of the film’s scenes revolve around that idea – from Freddie’s aimless pursuit of work that he only ends up failing at, or the to-and-fro march from wall to window that Hoffman’s character puts him through, ostensibly to train him, but as it descends into surrealism Freddie hasn’t really found anything of substance, he continues blindly through the world, searching for meaning. This metaphor is also captured so beautifully by his nostalgia and longing for an old affair that represents the only time in his life when there was meaning, but he can never recapture that. There is some sort of structural metaphor at play here as well, of America’s search for identity as a country in the immediate post-war period.

All that said, the film is gorgeous to look at, the performances are astonishingly good, the score is wonderfully unsettling and at times it’s incredibly touching. I can see, however, that the film is a ‘difficult’ film. It intentionally frustrates the viewer looking for a linear story with resolution. The characters are not terribly nice people. Both Freddie and Lancaster Dodd do and say some pretty unpleasant things, but they have such a chemistry on screen, each there to provide the other with the meaning to life that they think they need. Freddie is an animal, sexually motivated, prone to violence, alcoholic, and as such may not be likeable to everyone, but Phoenix injects a vulnerability and world-weariness to him, a questing, forlorn nature that makes it impossible not to find some sympathy with him, even if it’s the sympathy you give to a disease-ridden, broken, savage old dog.

Spectacular film-making. One of my favourites of the year. Lingered long after the final frame. I should have reviewed it sooner after I watched it, which is why it is being lumped in with this round-up.

Not so much a remake as a revisit to the Charles Portis source novel of True Grit, the Coen Brothers’ gritty western is an elegiac version of a great story. Shot with washed-out filters in a winter country bled dry of colour, Hailee Steinfeld’s precocious Mattie Ross out for revenge grabs our attention from the opening. She more than admirably holds her own when Jeff Bridges’ grungy portrayal of Rooster Cogburn shows up, larger than life, drinking and shooting his way through the rough justice of the old west.

Ably supported by Matt Damon’s Texas Ranger and a typically colourful cast of Coen grotesques, Bridges cuts through the romanticised vision of the gunfighter to bring us this jaded lawman, still good at heart, but with questionable methods. It made me want to rewatch the 1969 film, a film I remember well from my childhood, for the contrast in approaches to the story.

Not quite sure why I chose to subject myself to Dark Skies. It came with a slew of bad reviews. I suppose it was part of the unending quest to find a properly scary film, and some aspect of this being about aliens just appealed to me.

As is often the case with low expectations, the film rarely turns out to be as bad as you think it’s going to be. It’s a competently handled chiller, documenting a family breakdown as much as alien abduction. There many levels where Dark Skies could have worked on a much more sophisticated level as metaphor for the breakdown of the family, and I genuinely think the film-makers were striving for something like that. More time is spent developing the characters than creating scares, which can only be a good thing. Unfortunately, those characters are uniformly mundane, dull everyfolk, in yet another white American suburban middle class home of the kind we have seen far FAR too much of. Instead of trying to reference Spielberg, it would have been far more interesting to make the characters stand out as something other than the target demographic. There are some quite effective scares and one or two in particular lingered with me after the film and gave me nightmares. So, job done. Shame the film doesn’t have the courage of its convictions and the ending is wholly predictable.

With the sequel hitting cinemas currently, it was time to finally see Red. If only because there are so few fun films these days that succeed as multi-purpose vehicles. In this case, action-comedy with an impressive ensemble cast. John Malkovich and Helen Mirren in particular appear to be having a whale of a time.

This is not a film that needs any sort of in-depth critique. It is comic-book cinema and bundles of fun. Cartoonish and ridiculous with some great music. It is still one of the more original and enjoyable action films of recent years. Much needed after the po-faced Bourne films and the various wannabes that followed (Taken etc…).

At the very least, I have to thank Red for introducing me to the incomparable Calibro 35. Italian jazz-funk-rock in the style of 1970s crime movie soundtracks. This is what all my best dreams should sound like.

Other than the full blog reviews of Man of Steel, Star Trek: Into Darkness and Pacific Rim I’ve seen quite a few films on the small screen and one or two others on the big screen, not all worthy of full page reviews, but here is a general round-up in a couple of parts.

First up, and probably one of the best out of the collection seen in the last couple of weeks is Ben Wheatley’s Civil War-era head-trip, A Field In England. An intense, funny hallucination of a film, filmed in gorgeous black and white cinematography on a shoestring, with some terrific performances.

This is brave, unconventional film-making and I’m so glad we have someone like Ben Wheatley making films like this and Sightseers and Kill List. Savage, weird, wholly unsettling films that make you remember how great cinema can be when boundaries are breached and two fingers are shown to predictability.

Trying to sum this film up is impossible. At it’s most basic, it’s about five men in a field during the English Civil War looking for treasure. Magic mushrooms are consumed. Black magic occurs. Is it a meditation on the British class system? Are they all in purgatory? Is it straight-out fantasy complete with magic? Answering those questions is kind of missing the point. It really has to be seen. If nothing else, it is the closest depiction of the magic mushroom experience committed to film. Not that I would know about such things… ahem…

Next is one of a slew of upcoming apocalypse comedies, This Is The End. If you know the players involved, Seth Rogen, Danny McBride, Jonah Hill etc… then you already know exactly what the film will be like.

It’s a collection of dick jokes, riffs on horror films (The Exorcist being the most obvious one) and general arseing around. Some jokes are funny. Some definitely aren’t. Some outstay their welcome.

There is a modicum of satirical fun being poked in Hollywood’s direction. Michael Cera’s cameo is hysterical. Rihanna is swallowed by a flaming hell-hole. There is one gimp-suit reveal that is cringe-inducingly amusing. Much of it feels like self-indulgence. Best parts of the film are the straight scenes at the beginning between Seth Rogen and Jay Baruchel. After that the tonal shifts are jarring and many scenes just feel thrown in for the hell of it. Bring on The World’s End.

Director Park Chan-Wook’s English language film, Stoker, was a pleasant surprise. I had heard many good things about it, but didn’t quite know what to expect.

Not a single frame is wasted in this hypnotic film. Every image and texture is relevant to the story in some way, be it directly or as a subtle, metaphorical image, all building and layering to create a whole. The foreshadowing is so beautifully done throughout it makes a repeat viewing an absolute must.

India Stoker is left to live with her unstable mother and creepy uncle after her father dies, but what is the uncle’s true purpose? What secrets is he hiding? The answer is more complicated than you might think and the film moves in unexpected directions. Despite India Stoker being a closed character, whose thoughts you aren’t privy to in the way you might be in novel, she still elicits a great deal of sympathy and draws the viewer in.

The film-making here is sensual, creating a complete world, using sound to create texture and music to unsettle; using editing to fracture time and represent mental states. You constantly question what is real as the entire film has a dream-like feel. The acting performances are top-notch and while it might not be for everyone – it does move at a slow pace (albeit full of dread and tension) – I would recommend this thoroughly, if even just to see what cinema is capable of when utilised to the full extent of its capabilities.

Many aspects of this film appealed to me before I went to see it. I liked that it wasn’t a sequel, or a remake/reboot, or an adaptation of a comic, or a TV series/Video game/theme park ride. It’s an original story (well perhaps, but more on that later…) and an unashamedly loud, brash summer blockbuster. The fact that Guillermo Del Toro was the director drew me to it all the more, and who doesn’t want to see GIGANTIC robots beating the utter crap out of GIGANTIC monsters?

Undoubtedly some SPOILERS AHEAD.

There is no doubt it achieves its main aim of putting that particular robot/monster titanic slugfest on the screen in some style. And for me, they were often its most entertaining sequences. The sheer volume in the cinema was enough to convincingly emulate the sensation of being slammed in the face by a double-decker bus sized fist. It definitely achieves that sense of scale, which was another thing that enticed me in the original teaser trailers and posters – they weren’t mincing around with exoskeletons or even Transformer-sized robots; these Jaegers were colossally immense, awe-inspiring constructions.

Beyond the megalithic punch-ups, I can’t say there is much more to recommend the film. Perhaps that is being unkind. I liked the concept of the ‘Drift’, the two pilots acting as right and left hemispheres of the brain, the ‘neural handshake’. That concept had great potential for revealing elements of backstory and character in a clever plot-relevant way. There is a stupendous amount of detail involved in the Jaegers and some of the world-building is interesting: for example I liked the way they dive straight in and take you through to a point well past the first incursion, or response, and submerge you face-first into this new world order. It’s a bold narrative move. Too many films these days (superhero movies, I’m talking to you) spend so much time with origin stories and set-up that it’s impossible to have a complete story in the world within the available running time.

But I’m being generous. This is a hugely expensive B-movie, complete with TERRIBLE dialogue, bad acting (Charlie Hunnam I’m looking at you, although the awful accent they saddled you with didn’t help), stock characters and over-used predictable plot elements.

At times it’s so ridiculous that I almost lost interest in the entire film. For example, when the two wacky scientists make their entrance (and any time they’re on the screen, to be honest). Various plot-convenient Jaeger abilities that had hitherto gone unemployed – ELBOW ROCKET! SWORD MODE! (why the thundering hell didn’t they use the sword before that point? And while I’m at it, why not just open up with plasma cannon to the head before the Kaiju get their slimy paws on you?). And the ending – let’s penetrate the giant alien ship and upload the virus to the alien mainframe then inexplicably escape let’s penetrate the Breach and nuke the sonsabitches then inexplicably escape.

And then I’m ticking off the painfully overused tropes and clichés – the loss of a parent/sibling/loved-one in the opening scenes to set up a character’s arc; the gruff commander with a secret, a rousing speech at the right moment and an eventual self-sacrifice for the good of the many (but really, who thought the ‘cancelling the apocalypse’ line was a good idea?); the cocky ace pilot whose respect our hero has to earn; the shadowy, uncaring government types etc…

It’s pointless going into the various plot holes in any detail, but the parts that really leapt out at me were the incredibly important scientist sent on his own into a life-threatening situation. No back-up at all? Not one guy who can maybe handle himself in a fight or possessing even an iota of common sense to help him on this perilous journey that might save the entire human race from becoming Kaiju muesli? What about the evolution that led from planes and tanks to humongous killer robots? Was there no inbetween stage where all that incredible technological know-how thought that perhaps barrages of intelligent missiles to the head might be more effective at taking down the Kaiju? Okay, that might not plug the breach, but seems a method that might have been considered.

Perhaps I’m asking too much of a film that is blatantly riffing on the classic Toho Godzilla films, which I used to enjoy heartily in all of their silliness. There was no pretence at being anything other than giant monsters fighting each other. The Jaegers reminded me of Jet Jaguar from Godzilla vs Megalon, and there is no doubt that Del Toro has made his own version of those films, with the sugary Japanese pop-culture references and instant appeal to kids (I would have loved the hell out of this film as a thirteen year-old boy).

Still… I can’t help but feel Del Toro is capable of something so much better. The script feels at times written by a committee to include all the elements such a film requires. I’m a huge fan of Del Toro’s subtler fantasy/horror movie work in The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth. I would love to see the version of Lovecraft’s Mountains of Madness as directed by him if he ever gets to go ahead with it. Pacific Rim feels like Del Toro is playing with his toys.

Six weeks too late with this review, but it is still in cinemas if you wish to take the trip into darkness yourself.

Arriving a full four years after the original J.J. Abrams reboot, Into Darkness is a different creature to that first film. Visually slick, with some great performances from Zachary Quinto, Chris Pine, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg and in particular, Benedict Cumberbatch as…

~~~SPOILERS~~~

…John Harrison, or Khan to his genetically enhanced friends and mortal enemies. And so begins the in-joke bingo card that is Star Trek: Into Darkness.

I’ll preface this by saying that I enjoyed the film. It is undeniably entertaining. It is a machine designed to thrill and strike awe, and it accomplishes both in equal measure, if not in abundance. Unfortunately, it is neither as good as the first film, nor is it even a good Star Trek film. It relies far too much on frantic action with added peril, over-the-top moralising… with more peril. And zippy, cool special effects to enhance the peril. It’s a little painting-by-numbers with the perilous scenes – Oh no! You accidentally armed the missile and it’s going to explode in 30 seconds! – We’ve got to run from here to there and gravity’s gone all illogically stupid in whatever manner is most convenient to put Kirk and Scotty in extreme peril! – Look out! A fist fight on moving vehicles that seem to have no identifiable purpose other than to provide a series of video-game style platforms to fight upon!

The major problem with the film, though, in my opinion is the over-use of in-jokes and references to other films. Some blatant. Some subtle. Some possibly just in my head. There is an excess of Trek-based references, from the Tribble, to mention of a Gorn, Carol Marcus (wink wink, nudge nudge), Nurse Chapel to entire sections of plot with the obvious use of a young Khan Noonien Singh and the resulting scenes from The Wrath of Khan played out in reverse. My problem with that is how backward-looking all of this is, after the forward-thinking time-tinkering of the 2009 reboot. I loved that they threw out years of Trek history, hopefully with the intent of moving on into uncharted waters and creating new stories. It’s hard not to utilise some aspects of Trek. There has to be Klingons and Romulans and Vulcans and so on, but did we really have to trade on the past quite so directly in this film.

Wrath of Khan is easily the best moment of Original Star Trek on film and this only serves to remind us of that, and in comparison how this film isn’t. To anyone unaware of that Trek history, it may be more enjoyable, or it might simply leave you a bit cold as after two films have Kirk and Spock really created such a well-defined bond in non-Trekkie viewer’s imaginations to elicit the strong emotions that they are trying to wring out of the audience here? With the original Wrath of Khan, Star Trek fans already had three seasons of the TV show and a film behind them, so the relationship between Kirk and Spock was thoroughly and comprehensively drawn out.

The entire film is a subverted buddy movie between Kirk and Spock – complete with snappy, comedy dialogue – “Pointy? Is that a derogatory reference?” But I’m not sure I was utterly convinced of the relationship these two have built up. They tell the story of their meeting and getting to know each other in the 2009 film, so I’m not sure this film needed to be entirely about that. In fact I wanted more of Chekov and Sulu who are a bit sidelined in this movie.

Back to the Bingo-card. Other movies referenced: –

Bladerunner – Khan reminds me so much of Roy Batty in this film, being the charismatic, violent, impossible-to-kill leader of a group of genetically enhanced humanoids who just want to live. And then, the obvious reference – like Tyrell, the crushing of Admiral Marcus’ head.

Godfather Part 3 – Not one everyone might spot, but these guys know their film-making and there is no way this would not have been considered. Khan’s helicopter attack on the gathered Federation bigwigs is an exact copy of the helicopter attack on the gathered Mafia Dons as orchestrated by Joe Mantegna’s Joey Zasa.

Indiana Jones – Mainly in the opening sequence, being chased by ‘natives’ in such a frantic fashion recalled quite strongly to me many scenes in the first two Indiana Jones films.

Star Wars – I wondered if Abrams was so keen to get started on his new Star Wars films for Disney that he couldn’t help but throw in a reference during the starship chase sequence with the Klingons. Spaceships flying down a canyon, slotting through tight spaces, and listen closely to the noise the Klingon ship makes. It’s the distinctive roar of a TIE fighter.

I could proceed with a huge list of plot holes – most of which dragged me out of the film to go “eh”? Such as: why hide the Enterprise underwater? – or – Wouldn’t they have faster response security at the meeting of ALL the federation bigwigs, so Khan can’t spend quite so long freely shooting at everyone? And many others, but it would start to seem petty. Suffice it to say that the majority of the post-film discussion was spent picking apart the mostly silly ‘plot’.

I feel they missed a chance to send the enterprise off on its 5 year mission straight away in this film, rather than finishing with that happening. I hope in the next film they give us something with proper aliens, and serious outer-space weirdness, which is what I loved most about Star Trek. I hope they set about creating something much more original instead of continuing to cherry-pick old Star Trek for its best bits.

I think the title says it all. ‘Into Darkness’ – what darkness? If they mean space, it’s a bit of a trite and obvious statement. In a summer packed with HUGE SF films, this won’t be one of the more memorable.

I went to see this purely on the strength of its trailer. Admittedly, the idea of yet another Superman reboot wasn’t something that excited me. I can barely remember the Bryan Singer reboot of a few short years ago (yet the Richard Donner/Christopher Reeve films are etched on my memory).

Yes, the trailer. Zack Snyder films make for great trailers. They are full of spectacular imagery, which when strung together with some tremendously exciting music will make a film look incredibly enticing. I recall the trailers for 300 and Watchmen and Sucker Punch, and how they teased with the stylised imagery. 300 I enjoyed, but has troubling racism issues and is just one long ridiculous fight sequence. Watchmen I remember being reasonably successful, if not, in the end, all that memorable enough to ever even vaguely eclipse the superb comic book. Ozymandias in the film never convinced me and there is some superb stuff left out from the comic. Sucker Punch… was Sucker Punch and the less said about that the better.

That right there is the stunning art of assembling a movie trailer. It’s a missile specially programmed to hit all the right buttons and sucker you in. The mystery to me is how Zack Snyder and team can create such fabulous imagery, but somehow manage to not string it together into a decent film. Can you tell I’m a little bitter?

***PROBABLY SPOILERS AHEAD***

What puzzles me is how there can be so much technical expertise and money thrown at a film like this and how there can be so much ineptitude with characters and plot elements. It’s tough to construct a narrative that can follow an opening sequence with Russell Crowe riding a dragon, leaping through space, evading crazy alien spaceships and swimming through a Matrix-esque vat of baby pods, and an entire planet exploding. I know this is how the Superman story begins, but there is a sequence later on that tells the story of Krypton using animated metal beads (there is probably a real name for this but I don’t know it…) which would have been a concise and clever way to do it without all the bombast – also accomplishing a different method of approaching the traditional narrative.

I liked that they plough straight in with Clark Kent all grown up and trying to find himself, flashing back to key points of his childhood rather than hashing out the Smallville era in full, but trouble seems to follow him around like a perilous plot element. Want to be a fisherman? Oh no! Exploding Oil Rig! Day out with Dad? TORNADO! Off to school? Everybody’s going to DROWN.

Actually, Henry Cavill’s Clark is a decent take on Superman. He comes across as relatively tortured to begin with, unsure of his place in the world, afraid to reveal his true nature out of fear, despite continually being forced into it – and I get that is the point. The characterisation is quite good there, and Cavill is more than capable in the role, culminating in a very un-Superman-like action that he is forced into. Cavill just manages to avoid smugness in the scenes where Superman has to take the moral high ground, or convey to an entire trigger-happy platoon of soldiers that he is not the enemy simply through a beatific grin and the arch of his manly cheekbones.

Amy Adams as Lois is less successful in my opinion. I think it’s more down to the direction than her performance, but her reaction to most things is the same slightly quizzical expression on her face. Including wandering into an alien spaceship and encountering the floating guard-bot or Superman sneaking up behind her. Also, she is continually placed exactly where the plot needs her to be, whether it makes any logical sense or not. Climbing an Arctic ice-cliff at night as though it’s a gentle stroll. Tracking down every single one of Clark’s acquaintances like the good reporter she is. And the worst one, right at the end, despite Superman punching Zod through every building inNew York Metropolis across a massive distance, she still manages to turn up right at the final moment exactly where he is. And the jokey kissing scene? Just conveniently forgetting that a horrific apocalypse has been wreaked upon New York and they are standing at Ground Zero.

This is where the film suffers most, in its narrative progression. It is choppy and poorly paced, with important plot points wedged in with no natural lead-in. And then Michael Shannon’s General Zod arrives and it’s all action, explosions, punching through windows and vehicles tossed around. Michael Shannon is very good, in fact, and an actor I thoroughly enjoy watching whatever he’s in. He has a barely-repressed intensity that just ignites the screen. Take Shelter is an extraordinary film with him at its centre. Back to the action… which is relentless, occasionally brilliant (I much prefer the fight in Smallville to what occurs later), but ultimately excessive with some intermittently bad CGI (although I think it looks better than a lot of the Avengers did) – and the final Superman vs Zod showdown is beyond ridiculous. Chuck Wending says it all about the final third of the movie in his hilarious review of the film.

Disappointing. Crowe and Costner didn’t work for me at all. They were just Crowe and Costner. Fishburne was okay but didn’t really get a chance to play his role, so when we come to the big tense scene where they’re trapped and about to be gravity-squished by the giant tripod that seems to be playing a really boring game of Pong through the Earth’s core, it’s hard to care what happens to anyone.

Don’t get me started on the shaky-cam. Or the clichéd moments of Superman always arriving right at the last moment to save the day. Or the old Good guy/Bad guy nonsense that permeates the film. And then there’s the Christ imagery…

I can’t say I’ve ever been a fan of US cop dramas, films or otherwise. Hill Street Blues is probably the last example of the genre I ever watched and that was a bazillion years ago. Showing my age. After that, in film at least, US buddy cop dramas in particular were a common trope from Lethal Weapon to Bad Boys and everything inbetween, and realism was never high up on the list of priorities.

End of Watch surfaced last year and I ended up watching it the other night as a random choice, purely because I’d heard it was supposed to be quite good and the film we wanted to watch (Django Unchained) was unavailable.

Firstly, this film is chock full of cop-movie clichés, from the banter between the leads played by Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña, to the feats of heroism and in particular the overly-intense Mexican gangster types. But it doesn’t matter (well it does in some instances…) because the film is shot from such a fresh point of view that it completely engages you. The banter is shot from a dashboard camera in the faces of the two leads, and these scenes anchor the film with believable humour and interactions, often with no relevance to the plot, but this film cares more about its characters than the loose plotline involving Mexican drug cartels.

And it’s the characters and their developing story that set this film alight. It’s not long before we find ourselves utterly invested in their lives. They are an incredibly likeable pair, and not without flaws, but the camaraderie and the close attention to their personal lives draws us in and makes us worry all the more for their safety. There is a feeling to this film, in the realism of most of the situations, that anything can happen. The outcome is never certain. Life is cheap on their watch, and death always close by.

There is a found-footage aspect to the way the film is shot and it sets its stall out that way, but doesn’t stick to it. A shaky, roving camera is still employed in scenes where there couldn’t possibly be a camera. That struck me as a little lazy and inconsistent in terms of style, even when I was still enjoying it, but it did draw me out of the movie when Gyllenhaal and Anna Kendrick are enjoying some ‘alone-time’ and we are still seeing it as though someone is standing in the bedroom shooting them with a handheld camera (which they are – it’s a film after all, but I don’t want my attention to be called to this fact). That said, it’s the camera-work that makes the film so special, putting the viewer right in the action, whether it’s a car chase and shootout or a mundane street scene, it creates a convincing point of view that makes you look over your shoulder.

South Central L.A. is the stage for the film, and while there is surely some realism in the way it’s portrayed, it’s so difficult to transcend the tropes set up by the glut of films from the 1990s that were set there. Boyz n the Hood, Menace II Society, South Central and so many others. There is some mention of how the neighbourhood has changed, which could potentially have been an interesting sociological angle – looking at how Hispanics have moved in large numbers, but in the film, it’s the Mexicans who end up being the bad guys instead of black people. That’s a little unfair, as they do balance it out with Michael Peña showing the flip-side of Mexican culture in L.A., but the stereotypical gangsters are a little ridiculous at times with dialogue that consists of saying ‘fuckin’ at a machine-gun rate.

I really wasn’t expecting to enjoy the film as much as I did, and by the end I was utterly gripped and absorbed in the lives of the two cops. The point of view is so deep that at times you do feel like a silent participant, sitting in the cop car with them listening to the wonderful dialogue exchanges; in the choking miasma of a burning building with them as they rescue some kids from a house fire; eavesdropping on a late-night drunken conversation at the end of a wedding, the kind fuelled by alcohol as well as emotion.

Doubtlessly, the film will not appeal to everyone, and perhaps some people will only see the flaws; the clichés. Maybe even some people might find it boring as its random, directionless nature–which so well represents the highs and lows of a typical work shift–leads them into one drug-den or conversation about relationships too many.

All I’ll say is, even if US cop dramas aren’t your thing, try a fresh point of view and give it a chance.

I’ve been doing some thinking about the blog. I know. Dangerous stuff. The relevant authorities have been alerted.

It’s a space I’d like to do more with, beyond its original remit as a blog to talk about my writing, which, let’s face it, I don’t tend to do much (talking about my writing, I mean. Not the actual writing, which I am doing. You get the drift.) In terms of the writing, I’ll certainly post that sort of stuff as much as humanly possible. Particularly in reference to things I’ve had accepted for publication and the documentation of their journey thereof. But it’s the film reviews I’ve probably enjoyed writing the most over the last few months, and I’d like to do a lot more of that. I do, of course, need to watch some actual films in order to carry that out and I’ve not seen many recently. Partly due to holiday time and being outside instead of planked in front of the TV or in the ripe-smelling dark of the cinema.

The plan is to come over all nostalgic and review some old films. In particular I’d like to choose a list of favourite films from throughout the years and write a little something about each of them. Decisions need to be made about whether that’s a top 10 or 20 or whatever. And I’ll continue with reviews of current-ish films. Next up is ‘End of Watch’ which I viewed last night (surprising film, and not the sort of genre I’d typically choose to watch). I’ve been intending to write a review of the new Star Trek film, but time ran away with me and I thought I might have the opportunity to see it again to cement my opinion of it. That didn’t happen and now it’s been almost 5 weeks since I saw it. Next week I plan to see ‘Man of Steel’ – purely because the trailer looks epic, otherwise I tend to find Superman a bit of a dull character.

At some point I’ve also been intending to list and write about some of my favourite stories from the pages of Black Static magazine – as a sort of way of reminding myself how privileged I feel having had two of my own stories published in there. That involves a little more time and effort scanning back through all my issues, but I’m looking forward to it and think it would be quite a worthwhile and enjoyable thing to do.

The writing has picked up pace for me once again, and I think that’s why I have this sudden energy and desire to carry out these activities. I hope this fire continues to burn for as long as possible.

Two films in the cinema recently. I know Cloud Atlas came out months ago in the US, but it was only out in the UK recently, and I caught it the other night at the end of its theatre-run.

This film was always going to be a challenge, for the film-makers and for the viewers. I’m a huge fan of David Mitchell’s novel and read it when it first came out. When I heard a film was being made, I scoffed at the idea. How on earth do you film a novel with six separate stories being told in a Russian doll structure, over several hundred years of time from a 19th century sailing ship to a far future post-apocalyptic society where everyone speaks in a pidgin language? A lot of what is enjoyable about David Mitchell’s novels is in the precise and beautiful language he engages for his prose, and I could not conceive of how such a film could be made, and how it would be enjoyable to watch.

I won’t say that I was entirely proved wrong, but the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer have made a tremendously ambitious film that weaves the six storylines together in a patchwork, rather than structuring it like the novel. A bold move that both works incredibly well and at the same time doesn’t quite convey the storytelling aspect that is so clever and integral to the novel – i.e. that each subsequent character is reading about the previous story in some format (a journal, letters, a mystery novel, a film, a confession etc…). It is present in the film, but the film concentrates far more on the interconnectedness theme and takes that to an extreme conclusion.

And that is the main difficulty I have with this movie. In an attempt to make the theme of connected souls through the ages, the film utilises the same actors to play many different roles in different timelines, which turns the experience of watching the movie into an actor-spotting game, and that in turn becomes more and more of a freakshow with Tom Hanks giving some ridiculous turns (including one unforgivable Scottish Accent and a vaguely passable Irish accent), culminating in white actors being transformed into Asians through a disturbing use of make-up effects and vice-versa (although I know which one will cause the most offence). I wondered if the film would have been any less enjoyable if they had simply employed different actors in the different timelines and actually, you know, used Korean actors for the Neo-Seoul scenes. I think with the distinctive visual style for each timeline employed throughout, it wouldn’t have made any difference, although I do understand why they did it, embodying the theme in what could’ve been a potentially clever manner, but I think ultimately devolved into some quite bad ageing make-up and racist caricature.

A shame really, as the film makes a solid attempt at bringing the book to the screen, with some extremely faithful scenes and good acting from Ben Whishaw and Jim Broadbent in particular. I did enjoy it, was swept up in the undeniably impressive visual grandeur, was also thrilled by the clever use of cutting between timelines to create tension. At times it feels like pantomime, but it’s better than you think, and if it introduces anyone to the magnificent novel then, job done.

Trance, I saw a couple of weeks ago on its release. A new Danny Boyle film is always something to be excited about. His ability to turn his directing hand to so many different styles so successfully is outstandingly impressive. His films are always stylish, shocking and thought provoking. Trance is no different in that respect, and I found myself thinking about it and discussing it for days afterwards.

It’s a difficult film to review without spoilers, but I’ll try.

It’s a film about identity, art theft and abusive relationships, which is already saying too much. Identity is the main theme, and the film itself has identity issues, with its point of view shifting unexpectedly and characters not being what they first appear to be.

I was riveted to it from start to finish. It is a head trip of a film, with a very blurred approach to what is real and employs some deliberately shocking imagery (some of which is gratuitous – in my opinion). It’s always thrilling and beautifully put together, but…

At its heart I found it rather a cold, empty experience. Because of the way it plays with identity and reality, identifying or sympathising with any character becomes impossible. Their true natures aren’t revealed until near the end, by which time it’s too late to feel empathy for anyone and events take increasingly more ridiculous and implausible turns. The acting performances are great from everyone involved – James McAvoy and Rosario Dawson in particular – which leads me to think it’s the fault of the story. With a film that is so trippy and mysterious, we the audience need something constant to grapple onto and pull us through the rabbit hole, otherwise the style overwhelms the substance and the film loses its emotional heart.

To discuss it any further would be to ruin the plot, and I would say that it will make enjoyable second viewing as it will be an entirely different film second time around. Took me back to the atmosphere of Shallow Grave with its implausible but entertaining story and its reprehensible characters. Entertaining but hollow.

I’ve been a bit lacking in the reviewing-of-films department on the blog recently. Not that I’ve seen a great deal of new films. I’ve only been to the cinema once since The Hobbit, but I have seen quite a few on the small screen, some of which have been wonderful. So here’s a brief round-up of three good films I’ve seen in the last month or so, and then I’ll try to get back to the longer reviews.

First, Beasts Of The Southern Wild. Absolutely the best film I’ve seen for a long time. Lyrical, astonishing, heartbreaking. Tough to sum up, as a simple plot summary does not do it justice. Dreamy (and nightmarish) magical realism set in a Louisiana Bayou, directed by Benh Zeitlin, all seen through the eyes of a little girl. And what a little girl… Quvenzhané Wallis is incredible, despite the fact she was what, five years old when this was made? She carries the entire film with a touching, believable performance of incredible strength and vulnerability. I cried like a baby at the end. There are strong layers of metaphor you can read here, ecological messages and the tide of progress sweeping aside the poor, but at its heart this is a personal journey about the courage of the tiniest resident of the ‘Bathtub’.

Life of Pi was the last film I saw in the cinema and I’d intended to write a proper review, but never got around to it. Now it’s been too long since I saw it to write something of substance as the movie is not fresh enough in my head any more.

Being a long-time fan of Yann Martel’s book I’d always thought Life of Pi would have suited being made as a stylised animation to suit the meditation upon storytelling that is at its heart. In the end, with the aid of modern visual effects (of which there is a controversy bubbling in Hollywood) and the directorial eye of Ang Lee the story has been brought to life superbly, retaining the stylised, animated feel I’d hoped for while at the same time employing elements of realism. Richard Parker the Bengal tiger is utterly believable as a CGI creation which, for once, I stopped seeing as special effects. The 3D is actually used creatively and lends texture to the images in a way that makes its use important here, unlike so many other 3D films where it’s just a gimmick. The visceral aspects of Pi’s journey are captured beautifully and Suraj Sharma is terrific in the role. Lived up to and exceeded my expectations for a film of this book.

Synecdoche: New York is not a recent film (2008), but one I’ve wanted to see since I first heard about it. Written and directed by Charlie Kaufman, who has been responsible for some of the best writing in film of the past decade – Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

This won’t be a film for everyone, that’s for sure, but for me it was sublime. Working on the level of dream logic with a magnificent scope as Philip Seymour Hoffman’s playwright/director character creates a gigantic, unending production based on his whole life in an aircraft hangar-sized warehouse. The play within the film is peopled by lookalikes and other actors playing roles from his life until those roles cross over into real life and all the lines are blurred. I loved the idea that he eventually becomes little more than a bit-part player in the production of his own life. It’s baffling and inscrutable, but hypnotic and funny at the same time, with some genuinely awesome imagery. One to watch, not one to describe.

Here’s an opening gambit. You probably won’t like this film. In fact, you shouldn’t like this film, as it goes out of its way to make itself unlikeable. Why, then, did I find myself enjoying it so much?

Here’s why you won’t like it.

The main character is a blank, an automaton who doesn’t engage your emotions or sympathy. It’s a wilfully obscure film with a glacial pace and dialogue that deliberately obfuscates, spinning in circles around itself and being delivered in stilted, glib epigrams that are weighted with apocalyptic portent but ultimately say nothing and add little to the plot (such as it is). And it has Robert Pattinson in it. Okay, that was a cheap shot – Twilight aside, he is a decent actor.

The plot is fairly slight, following Eric Packer, a young finance wizard who decides to ‘get a haircut’. The film consists of the entire journey across Manhattan in the back of his stretch limo to the barbers, with various little stops on the way and a procession of aides and flunkies dropping in to impart their nuggets of wisdom. All the while Packer’s Chief of Security is continually updating him about ‘credible threats’ to his life and society seems to be breaking down around the limo with increasingly violent protests happening, but never penetrating Packer’s insular bubble. Packer is only vaguely human, conducting his business like an alien trying to figure out human interaction, especially in his dealings with his new wife. I think it was a blatant choice on director David Cronenberg’s part to choose Robert Pattinson and play on his vampiric, inhuman persona.

The emotion and humanity in the film is really only to be found in the various cameos by the likes of Juliette Binoche, Samantha Morton and Paul Giamatti as they pass through Packer’s day, although many of them are as inscrutable as Packer himself. Packer gains no pleasure from anything and everything is an analysis to him. He treats his sexual encounters as no different to his daily rectal exam or discussions of financial theory, all of which takes place in the back of his limo.

The theme of this review is why did I like it?What was it about this impenetrable, stagey, slow drama that I enjoyed so much? Because I did enjoy it. I found it gripping to watch, even when the dialogue is almost abstract and impossible to follow there was a hypnotic quality about it. Like a metronome, the tick-tock procession of characters and situations set abstract notions spinning in my brain that I try but fail to fathom, although it doesn’t matter, because in a sense the film plays like a road movie and we start to wonder what each new character is going say or do. There is also an unresolved, tense atmosphere that permeates the entire film, becoming more and more apocalyptic and surreal. The interior of the limo becomes a place separate from reality, feeling almost like a spaceship or underwater craft moving slowly through the world, unaffected by it. There is a huge structural metaphor at play here, of the financial world and how it continues to move like a sleek shark no matter what forces assault it, but I think metaphors in film or literature shouldn’t be there to be understood, unless you’re a film student, so I don’t always like discussing them. Whether you see or don’t see the layers of metaphor is irrelevant. You should still be able to enjoy the film on any level, so if understanding the symbolism and metaphor and multi-layers of meaning is the only way to enjoy the film, in my opinion the film is a failure. Film is image-based and no matter the intention of the film-maker, those images should be able to create meaningful associations in the mind of the viewer. Those associations will differ from person to person, but each person should be able to get enough out of it to satisfy them.

That’s some explanation on what it was about the film that I enjoyed, but still doesn’t quite clarify why I, in particular, enjoyed it. Why does one person enjoy a film and not another watching the same film in the same circumstances? I know I’ve always had a peculiar patience for unconventional films; films that are thunderously slow; films with little or no plot to speak of. David Cronenberg’s films are often divisive and Cosmopolis falls firmly within the realms of Crash and Spider and Existenz, two of which were also novel adaptations – Cosmopolis being adapted from the Don De Lillo novel of the same name. I also enjoyed those particular films, each of which have their own layers of difficulty in engaging with the story and I wonder sometimes if Cronenberg does that on purpose, putting up obstacles and making a film difficult to like. Cosmopolis certainly does a grand job of that, defying the rules of making a protagonist even a little bit sympathetic, or making the building drama actually go somewhere. Maybe, in terms of enjoyment for me, it comes a lot down to atmosphere and Cosmopolis is dripping with it. An apocalyptic atmosphere where the real apocalypse isn’t the violent protests or people setting themselves on fire, but the apocalypse on the inside (of the limo in this case), in the tiniest of details, in Eric Packer’s self-seeking mission of understanding, or in the fractured mind of Paul Giamatti’s wronged employee. Where is Packer going anyway? What is he really after? Is it a depiction of his own personal collapse? Who knows? And that guessing game is something else that turns me onto a film like this. The performances are also excellent. The dialogue is highly unrealistic and consists of sequences of statements and questions with no direct responses or answers, and most of the time is impossible to follow, but when it’s being spoken with the intensity of Paul Giamatti, or the icy aloofness of Sarah Gaden it’s mesmerising.

Do I recommend you see it? Yes, and no, because I think I’ve explained why you’ll either like this or not like it. Either way it’s bound to create a strong opinion in one direction or the other.